Walked When I Shoulda Run
by alyseci5
Summary: Sommerfield's virus rips a hole in the vampire underworld, leaving chaos in its wake. It gives the Night Stalkers an edge that they've always lacked. It makes them sloppy.  Abigail Whistler/Hannibal King


**Fandom:** Blade: Trinity

**Pairing:**Abigail Whistler/Hannibal King

**Warnings/Spoilers:** Violence. Set post the movie

**Genres:**Angst, pre-relationship

**Status:** Complete, I'm planning more stories set in this Universe

**Disclaimer:** Blade: Trinity, the motion picture, is owned by New Line Cinema. This is a not for profit fanfiction, and no copyright infringement is intended.

**Author's Notes:** Thanks to beren_writes for beta reading duties. Any mistakes remaining are my own. Title and quote from 'Shoulda' by Jamie Woon. Written for my **kissbingo **card square 'wild card'.

-o-

_Walked when I shoulda run  
>Ran when I shoulda walked<br>And don't I know it  
>And don't I know it<em>

-o-

Sommerfield's virus rips a hole in the vampire underworld, leaving chaos in its wake. It's not a perfect solution; it doesn't act quite the way that Sommerfield intended. It behaves like a toxin, not a disease, dropping the vampires in their tracks. They gasp for breath and turn to ashes and dust where they fall; it means that they don't live long enough to spread it to others of their kind, and so the Night Stalkers have to become the vectors for this particular disease, travelling from city to city, hunting the way they always have. Wherever they find a nest, they smoke the fuckers, because Sommerfield may not have planned it that way but she's left them with one hell of a weapon.

It gives them an edge that they've always lacked.

It makes them sloppy.

They're in some shit little Hicksville of a town in the middle of nowhere, somewhere in the middle of the United States, when the shit hits the fan. The virus may not have spread ahead of them, but word has and the vampires are ready and waiting. They aren't running, and they aren't dying, and they're backed up by more familiars than Abigail has ever seen in one place. They take the Night Stalkers down before they can even deploy the Daystar virus.

When the dust has settled, Abigail expects to die. It's always been a possibility, and one that she's been ready for every single time she straps on her weaponry and climbs up into King's truck of the day, but that doesn't mean she's going down without a fight. Death doesn't frighten her; it's everything else that does.

They kill Henderson in front of her, snapping his neck with a crack that she's going to be hearing in her dreams, and then they drain Carruthers dry. Carruthers' feet twitch for a moment before they go still, and they drop her corpse to the floor with a hollow thud, where her body crumples like discarded laundry.

Abby doesn't flinch. She stares the bastard giving orders straight in the eye and refuses to look away as they slaughter the rest of her team. She's not going to give the fucker the satisfaction; she may not be King - she doesn't have a smartass one liner or half a dozen to hurl in his face or to hide behind - but she has her silence and that's just as effective a shield. She lifts her chin and won't back down.

He smiles at her, slowly so that it creeps across his face as he straightens his cuffs and fusses with his cufflinks.

"So, you're the famous Abigail Whistler," he says, and his voice is low and melodic, deliberately cultured.

She's fought more vampires than she can easily count, and they're all the same. They all think they're the second coming, buying into the sensuous hype, like they think they're in a fucking novel or something. She stares back at him, projecting as much contempt as she can with her silence and a single look, and his smile widens until his teeth show over his lip.

"I can't say I'm that impressed, frankly. I expected..." He trails off, waving one long, dark and elegantly manicured hand languidly in the air. "Well, something considerably more than I got. I'm a little disappointed."

The smile vanishes from his face, shockingly sudden, leaving the bare bones of what he is behind; he doesn't look amused any more - he looks hungry, angry. Vicious and vindictive.

"You're considerably less dangerous than I thought you'd be, you Night Stalkers. You don't quite rate as highly as Blade when it comes to the Boogeyman, but I have to say that you don't seem to be living up to your reputation." He steps closer, reaching out to stroke one be-taloned finger down the side of Abby's face and she pulls her head back and spits in the fucker's eye.

King would be proud of her, if he was here and not lying dead somewhere like the rest of her team. She hasn't seen him since they caught her, and soon she's going to join the rest of them in death. She tries to take some comfort in the thought. She tries not to think about King.

The vampire steps back, wiping her spittle from his face, and now she's really made him pissed. When he raises his hand this time, it's to smack it across her face, hard enough to split her lip and leave her ears ringing.

She spits out blood onto the floor, and glares up at him, strangely glad to have ripped all of his pretension away. This is his true face, and it's as ugly and twisted as the rest of his kind.

"Bring the bitch," he snarls, and one of the Neanderthals following his orders grabs her by her hair and hauls her behind him like a sack of potatoes.

She snarls and kicks, fighting with savage, unending fury, but it doesn't do any good, not when a second familiar grabs hold of her, and then a third so that they're half carrying her through the building as she twists and bucks and bites. They drop her onto a hard concrete floor, and she rolls fluidly to her knees, stopping only when one of the familiar's draws his gun and points it straight at her. He's too far away from her to take him down before he can use it, and she subsides, sinking back down to the ground and watching him fiercely.

If she's going to die, it's going to be on her terms, and she's going to take as many of them down with her as she can. Vampire or human familiar, it's all the same to her.

She seems to have permanently wiped the smile from the vampire's face; he's stalking around her, keeping out of striking distance, his eyes burning with fury. It's that look - cold and calculating, like a shark's, no, like something rotting and stinking, unnatural - that finally seeps past Abby's defences, putting her on guard. He's not looking predatory, the way that she's used to with vampires; it's not as though any of them has ever had an original thought. There's an air of anticipation about him, and she doesn't think it's just about the pleasure of the imminent kill.

He stops in front of her, and now he smiles, slow and sure, and there's something in his gaze, something that lights up in his eyes as he looks past her, that puts a chill into her blood.

He clicks his fingers and, in spite of every instinct that screams at her not to take her eyes off the son of a bitch, she looks over her shoulder just in time to watch two more goons drag King into the room and drop him on the floor, where he lands in a ragged heap.

It takes everything she has not to give into the impulse to dart forward, reach King, to reach out for King. He has to be alive, has to be. Why else would they bring him?

A second later she gets it, and her heart stops for a second in her chest. They're going to kill him in front of her, tear his life from his body like they ripped it out of Henderson and Carruthers, and, worse, much worse than that, she's going to have to watch. She thought she'd avoided that horror, thought that King had died somewhere that she hadn't had to see, where she didn't have to think about it, and now she's not even going to be granted that small relief.

It's going to kill her just as cleanly as if they were to put a bullet in her brain. Anything they did to her after that would be a mercy.

Her fingers twitch towards King and the vampire smiles again, this time smug, pleased with her reaction even though she tries to keep it under wraps.

"Hannibal King," he purrs, sauntering around King. "The other half of the best that the Night Stalkers have to offer." He glances over at Abby, his eyes alight with a ferocious, hungry glee. "Two halves," he says, and the same glee is in his voice, something ugly that twists the harmonics of it, mad and capering. "They say that makes a whole. What do you say, Whistler?"

He tilts his head, watching her, and then reaches down with one hand, sinking it into the fabric of King's vest to haul King up onto his knees. There's blood flowing down King's face, down into his beard and smeared into skin that's too pale under the mask of it, but that flow means that King's still alive; Abigail watches as King blinks his eyes open and looks straight at her. The look is unfocused for a second, but then King's pupils contract and he **sees**her.

King coughs, the sound harsh and hacking, and he's cracked some ribs, maybe even more injured than that, judging by the way that he curls up afterwards, panting heavily, and from the liquid bubbling sound that lies underneath each breath. Abby licks at her lips, watching him and not caring now who sees it. It's not smart, it's not smart at all; she should be like stone, inhumanly cold. Like Blade, maybe, never giving a fuck about anyone else, but this isn't Henderson, whom she barely knew, or Carruthers, who was a snot-nosed kid Abby couldn't connect with.

This is her partner. This is King, who has her back, who has her trust. Who has her, whether she's ever let him know that or not.

"Well, well, well," the vampire says, and his voice isn't gleeful any more. It's rich with satisfaction, ripe with pleasure, and it promises nothing but pain. He switches his grip to grab King by his throat, hauling him up until he's dangling in the vampire's grasp like a neglected puppy, scrabbling at the vampire's hand around his neck and fighting for breath.

That's not the only way King's fighting; he throws a punch, which fails to connect, and kicks out but the move is sluggish and uncoordinated. Abby starts to rise to her feet, being smart be damned, but one of the goons knocks her to the floor again, pinning her down, and she can only glare and snarl.

"Not so sanguine now, are you, Whistler?" The fucker smirks at her, tilting his head again and looking straight at her, ignoring King, who is still struggling for breath in his grip. The light catches in his eyes, flashing silver, inhuman, and then he jerks King towards him and sinks his fangs into King's neck.

Abby screams; it's ripped out of her, a howl of anguish, of grief and rage, and she fights, she fights, kicking and punching, bucking and scrabbling, but she's pinned down and can only twist in fury, trying to get to King, trying to get to him.

King's body drops to the floor with a hollow, empty sound that stops the scream dead in her throat. It sticks there and chokes her, wet and heavy, and there are tears streaming down her face; she doesn't wipe them away, but lets them fall, uncaring of who sees them.

The vampire steps back, wiping the blood - King's blood - from his mouth with the back of his hand. He licks at his lips, and his smile this time is grotesque, stained red.

"He's not dead," he says, and his voice is low and gloating. "I'm going to leave the two of you together. That's what you want, isn't it? You and your partner?" He takes a couple of steps towards Abby, leaning in, and his face grimaces into an expression of mingled hate and fury. "You've killed us whenever you've found us, hunted us down when it's us who should be hunting **you**." The last word is a bellow, and red spit splatters against Abby's face.

"Well, now you're going to be the one hunted, Whistler, and you're the one going to die. But I'm not going to kill you." He steps back, draws himself up to his full height, towering over her, and snarls, "He is."

The guns stay trained on her as the vampire's familiars follow him out of the room, and she stays where she is until the door clangs shut behind them, until she hears the sound of the lock clicking home. She's not going to give them the satisfaction of reacting any further where they can see her, but as soon as they're alone, as soon as she's able to, she scrabbles over the floor to King's body, seizing hold of him frantically and rolling him over onto his back.

Whoever this fucker is, he wasn't kind; the teeth marks in King's throat are ragged and torn, already turning black around the edges where the virus is taking hold. She pulls King's head into her lap and cradles his face in her hands, calling his name and shaking him, first gently and then less so when he doesn't respond. The tears roll down her face as she smoothes the hair back from his forehead, and they fall to drop onto his skin.

He finally shudders and opens his eyes, staring up at her. "Hold on," she whispers, and the words come out choked and broken. "Just hold on, King, please."

He tries to say something, fingers fluttering up to catch at the fabric of her sleeve, snagging there, as she strokes her fingers over his face. It's already warming up, the fever taking hold of him, and he's shivering, his body shaking against hers.

She pulls him more firmly into her arms, holding him as close to her as she can.

"You're going to have to kill me," he slurs. "Abby..."

"No." She shakes her head, furious at him for giving up, furious at herself for the way that the tears are still bubbling up, grief and snot all mixed together when she should be stronger, more focused. More together for him, and offering him a hell of a lot more than just denial. "No, you hold on, you hear me? You hold on. We'll... we'll get you the cure..."

"Whistler -"

"Don't." Her voice breaks again. "Don't you fucking dare give up on me! You fucking bastard, don't you..."

"Don't want to hurt you." He gasps and shivers in pain, his eyes glazed as the fever rages inside him. "Abby, please..."

"You won't."

It's a promise to both of them, but he isn't listening. He turns his face in towards her, his body still shaking and she can't tell if that's with pain or grief, guilt or hopelessness.

"I promise... I promise..." But she can't do this to him, can't make him do this if he can't find the strength to. She has to say it, has to give him that much; she knows what he fears more than anything. She's not stupid. She's never been stupid when it comes to King, and maybe that's the problem.

She strokes her fingers over his face again, wiping away the blood and the sweat, the salt water that might be from the fever or from her tears, or his.

"I promise," she whispers, and she means it, pressing the words into him, and deep down inside herself as she presses her mouth against his, kissing him for the first time but not the last, never the last, she won't accept it.

His mouth is bloody; it tastes stale and like death, but he kisses her back, fierce and greedy and his fingers tighten against her skin. She burns the feel of him into her memory, the weight of him in her arms, and the desperation of his kisses.

"I promise I won't let you hurt me." Her heart breaks as she says it, but he smiles at her, so fucking grateful like she's doing him a favour. "But you have to hold on, King. You have to hold on as long as you can."

The tears roll down her face, dripping onto his bloodstained skin, and she kisses him again, long and deep, trying to give him as much strength as she can, trying to capture as much as she can in case she loses it all.

"You have to promise me that."

The end


End file.
